For the sake of completeness, the state Capitol in St. Paul is closed to the public while they do interior renovations. Good thing I can still take in all those statues around the Capitol mall, I suppose. Also, mudslides along the Mississippi look like they'll make for some interesting detours to get to some parks and river walkways.

And with that, I'm off to find out exactly how excruciating of an ordeal it can be to deal with TSA, reservations made by Orbitz, DOS attacks on United Airlines' system, and other atrocities known to world travelers.

In lieu of any truly meaningful blogging, I thought I'd start with some pre-vacation items. The wheels go up for me Thursday morning. Dog-sitter has already been procured. And I've taken the radical step of purchasing a piece of luggage. After checking the memory banks, it seems the last real vacation I had was to Toronto in 2000. About all I know to expect for my first post-9/11 flight is to arrive early, take off the shoes, and rely on the hotel for shampoo and conditioner.

The biggest reason that the Twin Cities is a destination of interest for me is to visit Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul. I've been listening to podcasts of Greg Boyd's sermons since sometime after he was profiled in the NY Times in 2006. And the first time I read the article, I wasn't particularly swayed. I wasn't looking for another Jim Wallis to listen to. But I eventually gave him a listen and his messages grew on me rather quickly. I picked up the book he was known for at the time - "The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power Is Destroying the Church" - and it resonated pretty strongly. I'm sure there are those who would still classify Boyd as a crazy liberal evangelical. But I've never been disappointed that I didn't make the time to listen to each week's message. Since then, the podcast-listening hasn't been as routine. But Woodland Hills has remained on something akin to a bucket list. So that's my Saturday. To set the vacation mood, this little blog post of Boyd's is worth the time.

Outside of that, my vacation criteria were rather simple: get to another plot of geography outside the state. If for no other reason than to say I've actually set foot outside of Texas. And make sure there's enough big-city accoutrements to satisfy my exploratory curiosity. So, with all due regards to Podunk, Idaho, I'm off to a big city with the following agenda items somewhere on my to-do list:

» Mall of America - This really goes without saying.

» See the St. Paul Saints - The Twins are in town while I'm there. But where's the fun in that? The Saints are partly owned by none other than Bill Murray. Yes, Ghostbusters Bill Murray. And all I know otherwise about the team is that the catcher is the only .400 hitter in the American Association of Independent Professional Baseball (the only Texas teams being the Grand Prairie AirHogs and the Amarillo Thunderheads). Lucky me, I get to catch the Ottawa Champions.

» Stone Arch Bridge - And about a handful of other places to see the Mississippi River up close.

» Ride a bike - The Twin Cities has a pretty robust bike share program and given that much of my sightseeing falls conveniently in each downtown area, biking it makes the most sense.

» Whitesnake - They happen to be in town Saturday night. Coincidence?

Obviously, there are loads of other details to take up time. I'll try and save a few as a surprise.

I picked a heck of a week-plus to get my stuff (and dog, and myself) moved back to Houston. Let's see:

- KHOU polled Houstonians on their preference for Mayor. Looking forward to seeing what this "Don't Know" dude's position is on fixing potholes.

- Yet another senseless hate crime is carried out in a way that is too maddeningly common. As a result, the confederate flag falls - in southern state capitols, Amazon, and Bo & Luke's car. Never underestimate what a confused 21-yr old hillbilly can accomplish in this world.

- Obamacare survives another challenge with the Supreme Court. The Bush-appointed/conservatives-celebrated Chief Justice wrote the opinion on why. Some heads exploded. Scalia among them.

- Greece somehow managed to knock my brokerage account down a couple of percentage points in one day. Good thing I was too busy schlepping boxes to check in and join in on the panic.

- We finally get an answer to what happens when investigators find heretofore unreleased records from Hillary Clinton. And unless references to hanging up fax lines is code for "let the embassy burn," wingnuts are sure to be disappointed.

- Oh, and gays can marry.

On the plus side, I've managed to successfully install cable and internet in my apartment, the dog is confused by her new surroundings, the office gets a remodel this week, and I still need to plan a vacation agenda down to the nanosecond.

Long days in the Lege managed to kill off a lot of my normal reading time. If you'd like, I can provide countless hours of very abnormal committee hearing notes that have occupied much of that time. But for the summer ahead, there are a few items on the reading list to make up for lost time. And you should know that the sole purpose of posting this is to shame myself into actually reading these for fear that someone will ask me about them (what with all the dinner parties I attend).

» Red Tape: Its Origins, Uses, and Abusesby Herbert KaufmanI actually forgot I ordered this since I pre-ordered it several months prior to release. Which is remarkable since the book is a reprint of a 1977 book.

As far as subject matter goes, the book keeps me planted pretty close to the Political Science/Public Administration realm. Which is just as well since I've got two partially-read collegetexts on the subject to mow through over the next 18 months. I've put off buying James Q. Wilson's "Bureaucracy" to fill this need for reading material. So I'm hoping that it absolves me of the need to buy more lit in this genre when it's all said and done.

» Ecstatic Nation: Confidence, Crisis, and Compromise, 1848-1877by Brenda Wineapple I wish there was some majestical reason I could give for picking this book out of the herd, but the reality is that it came with a $3.79 price tag that went very well with my itch to read more about Reconstruction-era history.

One more legislative session is out of the way. One thing that definitely feels overdue is the need for an actual vacation. So, no sooner than I get my stuff moved back into a new place in Houston, I'll be packing up for a few days in the Twin Cities of Minnesota (a poor man's DFW, if you will). Most of time is penciled in for the St. Paul side of things, although Mall of America is an obligatory stop and I've noticed a timely Twins-Tigers series going on while I'm in town. The main draw for me is a visit to Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul. But I'm spending a lot of my free time listing other possible things to do, see, eat, or experience. If you know of anything worthwhile to do in either Minneapolis of St. Paul, feel free to let me know.

A little belated obit this time around. It seems I missed a call on July 3rd from an 817 number. Since I didn't recognize the number, google informed me that it was for the Tarrant County Medical Examiner's office, which pretty much filled in a few blanks for me. It turns out that dad had passed in his sleep a little less than 11 months after mom's passing.

Most of these moments are just dealt with by some run-of-the-mill grieving, replaying of memories, funerals, and exchanges of some kind words with long-lost friends. This being the last of my parents, there was some added work of dealing with attorneys, banks, and insurance companies. There's also a house and truck to sell whenever the probate process allows for. In short - there's more work to do this time around.

On the plus side, I got to hang out with my sister for the first time since I don't know when. I spoke with my brother for the first time since I don't know when. And I got to show Elsie the wonders of a big back yard to play in. And little 5-month-old Elsie got to terrorize an old hunting dog for a couple of days. I'd much rather have had the opportunity to show Elsie off to dad in December, but the timing is what it is.

So that makes eleven months of losing a mom, grandmother, and dad. Hardly the most fun thing in the world. But since I'm writing a bit past due on all of this, most of the grieving has already been processed.

At some point between the time I moved out in the mid-90s and now, I've realized a lot of attributes that I've picked up from dad in particular. I remember a handful of years when dad worked as a grocery warehouse manager, the family would celebrate Thanksgiving and Christmas early in the day - and then see dad off to work later in the day. It turns out that delivering groceries didn't take much of a holiday. I suppose some families would see this as tragic and wish they could celebrate a full holiday. We chose to see it as something more heroic as dad would go off to save the day for a world in need of food. I'm sure that there's a small part of that experience that sticks with me as I see any and all major holidays as an excuse to do more work. I'm equally sure that whatever part of my brain is in charge of understanding logistics has been aided by either genetics or osmosis. Just as well that one of the items I took with me was a model of an old Fleming 18-wheeler that dad had in his study. So those aspects live on.

It was also dad who started the Cougar tradition in our household. He was a student and mom worked on campus when they met. When I was a kid, I somehow gravitated to dad's old yearbooks and textbooks. Dad was a running back at Galveston Ball High School. He was a backup to the great Oscar Cripps, who would go on to coach Craig James and the Klingler brothers at Stratford High School. After Cripps graduated, dad spent the next year as a starting running back for the Toros. That always made him a bit of a badass in my book.

When the family moved out to Mississippi (and continued when we moved to the DFW mid cities), we would pack up for a handful of weekend roadtrips back to Texas so that mom & dad could go to UH football games and us kids would stay with Grandma Wythe in Galveston. Along the way, we usually stopped in Center for some of Grandma Elliot's barbeque. If there's a better family tradition then that, I'd like to hear your case.

My parents did this during the 1975 season that had the Cougars go 2-8. The next season, UH entered the Southwest Conference and earned co-champion status. That sent us to our first Cotton Bowl (back when it meant something) and ended the season ranked 4th in the nation. Cubs fans have it easy compared to Coog fans. And getting that story told to you as a kid teaches you a great deal about loyalty.

Eventually, me and sis got to go to some games on a regular basis. Dad got field passes once so that me and my brother could watch Arkansas blow out the Coogs at the Dome. We visited games at College Station (where we witnessed our first win in that stadium), Arkansas (where I'm pretty sure I spent more time observing cheerleaders), Waco (same), and Austin (mom and dad got to see the 30-0 win; us kids got to observe a 55-to-something blowout loss). We learned heartbreak as a family when John Jenkins took a poorly-prepared team to face the Miami Hurricanes in 1991. I've never forgiven Gino Torretta for it, either.

I went through a lot of the leaner Run & Shoot years, attending games with my parents. We spent a Christmas Eve watching the Briles/Kolb-era Coogs get in fights with the University of Hawaii mascot. And it was never terribly unexpected to get a call from dad immediately after a UH win - or even when Trinity High School won a big game. I never suited up to play the game like dad did. But those moments help explain some of the fascination for it. I'm pretty sure that'll live on, too.

As you might have noticed, blogging has been uber-sparse in the past few months. Typically, when I've explained why this is to people in the real world, I some variation of "You must be busy." the answer to that would be a resounding yes ... and no. I'm not really all that more busy than I've every been with anything else going on professionally. But a lot of what I am doing these days serves as a substitute for the outlet of blogging.

The biggest part of that has had me watching the fascinating world of interim hearings going on in Austin - over 60 of them since late February. So instead of flipping through my online reading list and riffing on matters of outrage and attaboys, much of that time has gone toward watching the fascinating world of interim charges being discussed at a leisurely pace by House and Senate committees, taking copious notes, and saving said notes. And with that, the outlet of finding something interesting in the world and writing up something slightly less interesting to say about it is fulfilled.

Of course, all of that comes at a point when there are some genuinely interesting things going on in the world that I've just had to sit back and wave at as they pass by: the fact that we've settled upon every statewide officeholder above the pay-grade of Railroad Commission being occupied by a new person for the first time since I-forget-when; the fact that a certain segment of the Houston-base part of the world went nuts over the idea that there is a religious right to discriminate; and the fact that I finally got around to adding a new Basset Hound to my world - Elsie B. Wythe.

The name derives from the fact that I didn't have a perfect girl's name set aside for a Basset and the idea that I could make a name something of an homage to my mom and two grandmothers, whose names began with two Ls and one E (Ls ... E. Elsie. Get it?). I won't even get into the time suck that comes from picking up dog poop and walking a puppy every two hours to minimize the possibility of pee flowing through the living room. We've already been through two dog beds, one throw blanket, and miles of patience for house training. So with that, who has time for blogging?

Of course, the reality is that I will eventually get back on the blogging horse. But I think it's as good a time as any for rethinking the routine. I may bring a little of the Interim Hearing info onto the blog, I might rediscover the joys of aggreblogging to keep up with the information flow. I might just pick one or two issue areas that I'd like to focus on in more detail. I might pick up where TBogg has left off and provide the world a weekly dose of Basset Hound photos. And, if the stars align, I might even get back in the poorly-developed habit of updating the Almanac.

Consider this my feeble effort to pry myself out of a bout of "burial by research."

» First things first, Early Voting is going on in the Houston area for City Council and HCC trustee elections. I'm covered in both of those situations and cast my vote for Robinson, Morales, and Glaser. I'll leave it to the smart readers to figure out what offices those match up to and why I chose them. I had something approaching fun working as an Election Clerk during the November elections, but I'm skipping out on that this time around. That's not intended to dissuade any readership who might be interested in doing so and working in the primaries next March - especially if you have any spoken language skill in Vietnamese, Chinese, or Spanish. One of the newfound joys in life is that I now get calls and requests for leads on that. Feel free to hit me up if that sounds like something you'd want to try.

» Compressing all of my football notes into the briefest possible bullet-point: I'm a little proud of myself for venturing out to see a few Coog games finally. I never thought much of the crowded environs at the old Robertson, so the travel-year for home games made it interesting to see the soccer stadium and pick up an affordable ticket at Reliant for the SMU shutout. On the high school front, my Trinity Trojans are still in the playoffs - but they go up against a team that dropped 61 points on them earlier in the season. Win or lose, though, the 5A-D1 title game *should* be an all-Metroplex affair. I'm going to love that if Trinity makes it. And I'm rooting for Allen High if they don't. I had the good fortune of watching the Cinco Ranch Cougars play Strake Jesuit this season. Luke Klingler (David's kid) was the QB and it looked like they were just playing catch until Luke took a hit and stayed out the rest of the game in order to avoid injury before the playoffs. Luke doesn't seem to have a college offer. He might land at a DI school. But I've got to think that there's a DII school out there that would kill to have a kid with his kind of arm and that might be a quicker path to a starting gig. His cousin, Cory Klingler (Jimmy's kid), will be playing on the offensive line for Rice over the next four years. And on a note of small-world-itis, David Klingler works right across the freeway from me. That's some kind of Coog overkill if you ask me. And on a sub-HS level ... yes, I'm aware of Case Keenum being the starting quarterback for the Texans. I've already instructed Aereo to DVR "The Sound of Music" tomorrow night due to the game being of more immediate interest.

» Looking ahead to Campaign '14, I'm just as amused as the next person about Al Hoang vs Hubert Vo. Amusing because Hubert's district gained a few points in Dem strength due to redistricting in the 2013 special session. For my boss's part, we gained some turf that I'm very much looking forward to working.

» The latest read on my Kindle: "The New Democrats and the Return to Power" by Al From, formerly of the Democratic Leadership Council. I thought I might read it in one sitting, but the flashbacks kinda took me by surprise. And yes, there will be a full review posted ASAP.

» Steve Teles's "Kludgeocracy in America" is something that I truly feel is worth a bit of written-word exploration (sometimes known as blogging). But if you're contemplating working as an intern for my boss in 2015, there's a higher degree of certainty that you'll get a fuller classroom-style treatment on it in the next legislative session.

» Combining the two points above, I'm also finally getting around to reading Stephen Waldman's (back when he was known as Steven) 1996 mini-opus, "The Bill." It only took me 17 years to get around to it. And it looks like it will be very much in use for those same interns, come 2015.

» End-of-the-year(ish) posts remind me that it's time to go through some of the random guitar noodling I've done over the past year. I'm pretty sure the pickings will be slim since the practice regimen has suffered in much the same way that the blog schedule has. I'll find something worth posting, though. That, or I'll finally do a recording of Whitesnake's "Here I Go Again." Don't say you weren't warned.